


Stranger Things

by sister_coyote



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Genderswap, Interspecies, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-06
Updated: 2007-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:42:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many odd things about it, but at heart they are still one another, and that is enough and more than enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranger Things

"It seems as though our quarry always turns out to be inside an ancient castle or ruined temple." Balthier picked his way over the rubble of the broken jade columns. "You would think that at least once we would be retrieving a precious artifact from somewhere comfortable, dry and well-lit."

"We would," Fran said, "were it not for your affinity for the _flashy_." She was smiling, looking back and sideways at him, as she stepped over a rivulet of filthy water.

"Well, one must keep up appearances."

It took several hours to find the particular treasure chamber that contained the jeweled Hoop of Namaire, famed and fabled and worth a pretty price to a particular wealthy collector of oddities. And perhaps Fran was right: something in him preferred the flashy haul, though he bowed to her practicality most of the time and ferried fruit from south to north and lumber from north to south. It was only to be expected, given that he'd learned no small measure of what he knew of piratery from the stage, and another measure from books with titles like _The_ _Rogue_ _of_ _Al_ _Atanel_ and _The_ _Lay_ _of_ _the_ _Lord_ _of_ _Tyn_—but then he had never found out where a viera had learned anything of the underworld, either.

It took several hours, and in the course of those hours Fran felled countless cave rats with her bow, and he (who dared not use his gun within the ruin, for fear he bring the roof down on their heads) dispatched a crawling venomous thing with his dagger. When the found the chamber at last, Fran wasted no time in approaching the pedestal on which the hoop rested; but when she gripped it and pulled, it did not budge.

"It is firmly wedged," she said, frowning. She worked her hand under the edge; Balthier could see the muscles tighten in her arm as she pulled. "Are you able to hold it from that side?"

As soon as Balthier touched the hoop, the air filled with a soft whine. Before he could even let go of it, something whirled in the hoop's center and exploded, sweeping him like a hot wind. A brilliant flare blazed out over them both. Balthier closed his eyes, saw blue-white afterimages behind his eyelids.

The desert-wind sensation receded. Balthier teetered, let go of the hoop, lost his balance and landed flat on his back. His feet slipped out of his boots, and when he tried to brace them on the floor to stand up, they skittered . . . oddly.

He lay there for a moment, blinking back dark spots that obscured his vision. Fran asked, "Are you all right?"

"There's something wrong with my feet," he said, and as soon as the words left his mouth, realized that there was also something wrong with his _voice_.

And with Fran's. It was deeper than usual when she said, "_Wrong_ is not quite the correct word." She sounded amused. He rubbed his eyes and looked at her—she was sitting as well—and then, slowly, down at himself.

"Well," he said, and felt his ears turn outward, the way hers did—had done?—when she was discomfited.

She folded her arms across her newly-flat chest. "Does this mean that I am now the leading man?"

* * *

"I had heard of such things," Fran said, one hand on the stone in which the hoop was buried. "Relics of an ancient time. I had believed them myth, until now."

"And it's temporary?" It was still alien, the higher register of his voice, the odd notes lent by the slightly different shape of his viera mouth.

"So say the tales. To assume the sex and species of the person with whom you touched the ring—but only for a time. Whether they were aids to diplomacy or merely an entertainment . . . ." She gave an eloquent shrug.

Balthier sighed, and couldn't help but notice the way the motion made his chest rise and fall. "Then I suppose there's nothing for it but to wait it out."

Fran nodded, and turned around to lean against the stone. It was not so strange to see her as a man—oh, it was _strange_, but her bearing was the same, her long legs, her lean body; she lacked breasts, and the line from chest to waist to hip was different, but it was still recognizably _her_, even if she happened to be a he. It was the lack of her long ears that was most startling, in fact; she looked unbalanced without them, just as Balthier felt unbalanced _with_ them. Well, and the feet.

"What is so fascinating?" Fran asked, arching one eyebrow. He could almost _see_ how she would have tilted her ears, wrinkled her nose; but that was a viera gesture, not a hume one, and she was no longer physically capable of it.

"You," he said. "You make a very charming hume, I must say, but it's not how I'm used to seeing you."

Her mouth curved in a smile. "Come here," she said.

He needed her help to get to his feet—it was hard to balance—and she had a similar problem until he said, "You might want to take those shoes off; they weren't made for hume feet," and she shed them, frowning as she put the flat of her sole to the ground. They leaned on each other for a moment, and then she pointed to a cracked mirror among the hoard.

"It is not how I am used to seeing you, either," she said dryly.

Balthier stared. Even with his clothes obscuring the changes to his body—well, it was obvious. He was taller than he had been; no surprise, as the viera were a tall race. His face, his legs, and his . . . _breasts_—the shape of his nose, the long ears—the curve of his waist beneath his doublet . . . .

"You make a very charming viera," Fran said, echoing him, all dry amusement and the slant of her mouth, which was less full than it had been, just as the set of her jaw was different: and looking at her, her-him, _her_, Balthier was suddenly very aware of another change in his body.

Fran let go of him and moved to sit cross-legged with her back to the stone altar, and Balthier wobbled a moment before sitting himself. He still couldn't figure out how to stand up on viera feet—the coarse-padded, claw-toed ball of the foot, the long angle of the heel well past what he could stand on: it was like trying to stand tiptoe all the time. He glanced up to see Fran rubbing her feet, the sole and heel, and grimacing.

"It is strange," she said, "to walk flat-footed on the earth. It feels like . . . treading heavy, unsubtle. I do not think I could move as quick."

"You're one up on me," Balthier said, flexing his foot, watching the splay of his claws. "I don't think I can walk at all. At least not without a lot more practice, which I doubt I'm going to get."

"Mm," Fran said. "I have never had feet so easily stubbed and bruised. I see now why you wear such heavy-soled boots to tread the ground. It would be a welcome protection."

"Would you like to borrow mine?" he asked. "I doubt I'll be using them until I'm back to normal." His feet had the thick horny pads hers now lacked, the claws for traction scraping on the floor with each step.

She gave her head a little shake, her hair falling around her face—such a luxuriant fall of hair, around a square masculine face; it was a peculiar sight indeed. No man Balthier had ever met had had hair such as _that_. But then, no hume woman had, either. She said, "I do not think it will be necessary, unless we are forced to travel." But still she rubbed her hand over the arch of her foot, as if to soothe it.

"Here," he said, and took her foot in his hands, rubbing with his thumb. He had done it often before—never to her feet, which normally needed no such treatment, but to her back, her neck, her hands; after a long run, when they were both tense, and then they would find . . . other ways of releasing the tension. The thought made him ache, between his legs, where he had changed the most—and it was novel and distracting, the slow throb, the way he felt slick and hot looking at Fran, touching her skin.

He was careful of his claws, which had never been a concern before—careful not to scratch or prick her skin as he rubbed her feet, and then her ankles, her legs, and she said, "Balthier."

"Mmm?"

"I am currently not only hume but male."

"Not a situation your life to date has given you much preparation for, I expect," he said lightly, "although I must say I am something of an expert on the matter." Then, more seriously, he said, "It is more important that you are you."

She make a skeptical noise, but her fingers trailed through his hair—without the familiar prickle of her claws, just the short thin nails of a human—to the base of his ears, and began to stroke the insides, the fine velvety hairs there, just as he had so often done for her. The light touch sent a frission down his spine, a slow simmer of pleasure that curled low and hot.

He continued to knead her calf, raking lightly with his blunt claws to see the way she hummed and shivered. "I daresay we will both regret it if we have this opportunity and spend it discussing ancient history and waiting for it to wear off."

She smiled, and said, "As you will, then."

It was not difficult to undress; he had familiarity with removing her armor, as she knew the fastenings to his doublet and undershirt, and though the tension created by his new breasts and her wider shoulders made things somewhat more awkward, still it was not difficult. Fran was a gorgeous man: tall, slim, lean-hipped, clean-jawed, long-legged; she was erect already, divest of her clothing. Had she been born like this, in the Imperial City, she would have been a natural for the stage: she had such presence, such an exotic look.

She paused, her hands on his shoulders, looking at him as he had looked at her. Both of them sitting; neither could comfortably stand. "It has been a great many years since I saw another of my kind unclothed," she said. "It was always more pain than pleasure to associate with the others in exile."

Which was part of why she had chosen him for a partner—young, foolish, inexperience hume though he was. He knew that, and yet. "I may look like a viera, but I doubt I shall act like one," he said.

"Act like yourself," she said, again echoing him. "It is enough, and more than enough."

He kissed her, then; kissed her, and she kissed him back. She still kissed like herself, careful but with an edge, a hint of something restrained and not quite hume—and even still now, as she was hume, as she was hume and a man; but still she was herself. Her touch was her own, as she stroked his chest and touched his nipples—her own made strange by her larger fingers, and by the shape of his breasts. He swallowed a little sound, not quite a whimper, moving closer to her—hip against hip. Fran tilted her head, frowned a little, and said, "I feel half-deaf."

"I can hear everything," he said, and it was true: every catch of her breath, every touch of skin on skin, had its own sound to viera ears. For all her calculated look he could hear the rate of her heart. He curled a hand around her erection. She caught her breath, and met his eyes.

"You're quite sure?" Fran said.

He laid a hand on the lean muscle of her chest and said, "Quite sure." For emphasis, he slung a leg over her narrow hips and settled against her.

She smiled and arched up as he sank down onto her, felt the press of the head into him—pressure and a stretch that burned at first, and he paused. Fran cupped one breast in the palm of her hand—her touch familiar and yet made strange by her broader palm, the lack of claws. He steadied himself and drew a breath and pushed down the rest of the way—a stretch that was discomfort at first but that softened at the edges, and more as he moved, slick hot slide, until she was deep within and he caught his breath.

She didn't ask him if he was all right, and he was glad of it.

"There," he said, "ah, there," and began to move—and she moved, first with him, a little awkwardly, and then counterpointing his slow rhythm as they each figured out how to move like this. Her hands moved to encircle his waist (and her hands were bigger, just as his waist was narrower); his ears could pick out the cadence of her breath and her heartbeat so distinctly, and when she moaned a little he heard that too, clear. Could she always hear him like this, stripping him down to breath and the beat of blood?

She shuddered, and so did he; and then she bit her lip and reached down to press her fingers against him, against his . . . clitoris (how odd to think of that, how odd that it was odd even here, like this, with her inside him). Her touch was delicate at first, tentative, and then suddenly stronger as if she had just remembered she had no claws to be concerned of. He groaned and flexed around her, rolling his head back, and she raked her other hand through his hair and caressed his ears again, the inner curve, the light dusting of hair.

He shuddered, began to shudder and—as she kept her fingers steady moving, and thrusting into him—did not stop, until the edge of orgasm caught him: a different thing than he expected, a throbbing pulse that seemed at once to center where he opened and she pressed into him but also to expand through him, tension loosed and rippling, and he exhaled with a moan on the outbreath and rested his forehead against her shoulder as he went limp with the strength of it. She thrust once more, twice, and then made a low noise that his sharpened hearing caught full well, and came, her body tight against him and strange in its hardness, muscles tense without the softness of her breasts to counterpoint.

They did not dress right away—their clothes would not fit properly again until they regained their true shape—but Balthier pulled down the tattered edge of a curtain to keep off the chill of the ruin, and they kept their weapons close to hand, of course, against the possibility of rats or trolls.

"What shall we do about the hoop?" he asked. Perhaps such a thing should be left here after all, to surprise (and dismay) treasure hunters . . .

Fran's eyes narrowed. "I think we could blast it out," she said, "were we careful."

Balthier's ears twitched forward, amused, and he gave her his best leading-man smile, which still felt right despite it all.


End file.
